Jerry Floersch

Jerry Floersch, Ph.D., LCSW , an Associate Professor, Rutgers University School of Social Work, is a 1998 graduate of the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. After earning a masters degree in social work from the University of Kansas, he worked as a social worker in drug and alcohol, hospital, mental health, and community settings. He administered a mental health crisis service and played a key role in developing and implementing housing policies and programs for severely mentally ill adults. He is the author of Meds, Money, and Manners: The Case Management of Severe Mental Illness, published by Columbia University Press (2002), where, utilizing ethnographic and socio-historical methods, he examined the rise of community support services, the rise of the case manager and case management, and the limits of management models in providing services. He is a recipient of the prestigious NIMH K08 award (2004-2009) for training in and development of qualitative methods to study youth subjective experience of psychotropic treatment. His work on psychotropic treatment focuses on the meanings adolescents and young adults make of their medication treatment, including social and psychological ‘side effects.’ In 2008, he was recipient of a Case Western Reserve University Presidential Research Initiative award, where as the PI, he led a two-year investigation of college student use of mental health services, including psychiatric medications. His book, with Jeffrey Longhofer and Paul Kubek, On Having and Being a Case Manager, builds on earlier work in this field by exploring a clinical method for case management practice. He is currently conducting a multisite study of college student use of psychiatric medications. He has a new book with Oxford University Press (2013): Qualitative Methods for Practice.